Series 17 Autopsy

Series 17 was simultaneously one of the highest rated series of DW in the UK, the equal shortest at just 20 episodes and the poorest received.

The contemporary fan reviews are excoriating.

It concluded the otherwise fantastically received and highly regarded 70's DW and heralded a 80's revamp which was at least as big as the 60's/70's jump from B&W to colour.

Graham Williams was a producer who was thrust into the show suddenly and unwilligly at the end of 1976. He presided over disaster in the studio (Bromly and Goodwin), punishing adverse budgetary conditions (inflation in Britain in the late 70's was 15-20% pa), and script and staff problems. To the extent that the producer is responsible he is responsible but the luck was on his side.

Why is it so poor?
The ideas are present. The execution is slapdash and careless. The direction is weak. The time and budget are short.

Douglas Adams appointment as Script Editor was bizarre. He was never a particularly fastidious details kinda guy. Outlandish, big ideas and wild imagination have their value but trying to tame that and be a scruplulous, tight wordsmithing script editor is a fool's errand for a guy like Douglas.


We have rated Series 17 as three 'trouble' serials (30%'s), one more really close to that and one 1st division (80's%). Only if Shada is included is the average rating above 50%.

Season average is under 50% for the first time. Tom's worst season by far.

I had just started being a fan club member at the time this was new. JNT's revolutionisation was like a salvation at the time.

Discipline (killing the jokiness), getting the directors to make a serious effort and refreshing the look (new titles and incidental music) were all things that seemed overdue at the time.

Forty years on I guess DW survived it eventually. But fanservice killed it when the continued BBC management support failure undermined the show to the extent that episode counts went down to 14 in 1986.

But we'll get to that later....

107 Nightmare of Eden

Started 5-Oct

This is a mess. Worse it's a silly mess.

According to Bob Baker the initial idea was a homily about  "drugs are bad... hmm, 'kay".

It goes downhill from there.

Some very bad acting, crap effects, and shoddy direction make this abominable.

The production nightmare is not unprecendented in DW history but it is the most alarming. The decision to do the spaceships 'in studio' in about 2 hours instead of getting them filmed properly taking some weeks is symptomatic of a slack approach.

The walkout of director Bromly (see below) is also symptomatic.

This could be the worst ever produced, certainly the worst produced up to this point in time DW serial.

Biggest problem seems to be that someone gave the actors licence to be silly.

The acting is variable at best. Rigg is generally well handled by David Daker (previously Irongron in the Time Warrior) but he has moments he'd likely want to forget. Lewis Fiander as Tryst puts in an incredibly silly performance based on some Peter Sellers joke. Fisk and Costa (played by Geoffrey Hinsliff (Image of the Fendahl) and Peter Craze (brother of Michael, The Space Museum, The War Games, and B7 Seek Locate Destroy) appear as silly. All four of these guys are well regarded, otherwise competent actors who seem to have made some embarrassing blunders here.

The guy playing Dymond (Geoffrey Bateman) is a one note bore. Jennifer Lonsdale as Della and Barry Andrews as Stott are better but simply not honking like a goose is relatively good in this stinky foul-up.

Tom and Lalla are actually pretty good in this (given the material).

Effects and sets are particularly wobbly in this show. I lost count of the cardboard doors and walls. The climax to p1 is ruined by obvious patching in the panel and poor direction. (Check out the visible hands at 4 and 8 o'clock when the panel is replaced.) The brown stripes on the walls in the first class area of Empress are **brown 2 inch packing tape**.

The Mandrils have flare trousers, visible zips, silly hair, and lurch in a comic, unthreatening manner. The arm movements invite overdubs to singalong, dance music.

The costuming is astounding. The sparkly cops, the hoody passenger coveralls and sunnies, the Empress staff uniforms (sleeveless smock tunics over a body stocking, weird). This is just terrible.

The story is reasonably well plotted and the story is internally consistent. But the production is execrable.



ABM Rating 1.54/4.00
LJM Rating 2.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 3.10/10   

No. 98 (out of 107)

Link to Cumulative Rankings


Rankings Scoreboard





http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/5k.html

 The director booked for Nightmare Of Eden was Alan Bromly, who had previously helmed The Time Warrior in 1973. Bromly was now largely retired but still received occasional work from the BBC. Unfortunately, during rehearsals the old-school director quickly butted heads with Tom Baker, who was a commanding presence on Doctor Who and had become renowned for trying to impose his will on the production. Bromly had a very old-fashioned and authoritarian approach to directing, which did not sit well with the programme's star.

Also a source of concern during rehearsals was the drug element of the serial. Although Adams was a proponent of the angle, Williams was worried that it was unsuitable for a family-oriented show like Doctor Who, and his apprehension was shared by the series regulars. Lalla Ward, in particular, was keen to omit anything which might appear to glamourise the narcotics trade. As a result, various uses of drug language were amended to sound less appealing or exciting. Most notably, the drug at the centre of the story was originally called “xylophilin” or “XYP”, and nicknamed “zip”. This was changed to “vraxoin” (or “vrax” for short), although K·9's dialogue continued to refer to it by its original nomenclature.

Nightmare Of Eden was taped in two three-day blocks, both of which took place in BBC Television Centre Studio 6. Bromly had originally planned to record the serial more-or-less in story order, which was the traditional way of making Doctor Who until the mid-Seventies. However, he was ultimately convinced to proceed on a set-by-set basis, as had now become the norm. The recording of Nightmare Of Eden marked the return of David Brierley to Doctor Who as the voice of K·9: after making The Creature From The Pit at the start of the production schedule, Brierley had not been needed for either City Of Death or Destiny Of The Daleks.

The initial studio session for Nightmare Of Eden spanned August 12th to 14th. The first day dealt with scenes at the refreshment point and in the luggage section, as well as on the Empress bridge (for part one) and in the lounge (for parts one and two). Further bridge and lounge sequences were completed the next day, along with those in the Eden jungle and the capsule. August 14th was planned to be an effects-heavy day, involving scenes in the lounge which featured the CET projections, as well as the model shots of the Empress and the Hecate. Unfortunately, Bromly was ill-prepared for how extensively Doctor Who now incorporated special effects, and indeed for the generally faster pace of modern storytelling. Not all of the scheduled recording was completed, and the mood on set became strained.

    When Alan Bromly walked off the set on August 28th, Graham Williams had to step in to direct the remaining material

The second studio block took place from August 26th to 28th. The first day was concerned with scenes in the passenger pallet and in the elevator area. The 27th was dedicated to various corridor sequences, in addition to those in the sick bay anteroom, the Empress power unit, and the dark room on the Hecate. Bromly made several changes to his recording schedule and was uncompromising in dictating how he wanted the actors to perform. This drew the ire of Tom Baker. He began vocally insulting his director, leading to an argument on the studio floor for which Williams had to be summoned to intervene.

The situation deteriorated completely on the final day of production. With Baker in open revolt, Bromly completed work on some further sequences in the corridors before informing Williams during the supper break that he was walking away from Nightmare Of Eden. Williams himself was forced to step in to direct the remaining material, which included scenes in the corridors and the elevator area. With blame for the debacle placed squarely on Bromly's shoulders, it was agreed that Williams would complete the post-production work on Nightmare Of Eden, and that Bromly would never again be invited back to Doctor Who. Bromly retired completely from television soon thereafter; he passed away in September 1995.

106 The Creature from the Pit

 Started 1-Oct


There is a reasonable Sci-fi story in here. The strange alien emissary and the base commercial motive of various characters are almost meta SF meat and drink but they are wasted by poor production, shoddy direction, camp scripting and lazy cliched performance. John Bryans as 'Fagin' and Myra Frances as the 'Wicked WItch" of the Panto are the two worst examples.

Despite the mea cupla by Mat Irvine and co in the DVD extras, the actual creature is realised quite well by DW standards. I think the lighting saves it. It is what it is. It looks like what it's supposed to be: a ginormous, shapeless green blob.

Worst effort is the direction. Coming as it does from DW royalty Christopher Barry in his DW swansong this is particularly disappointing. Large parts of p3 and p4 are actors standing around in front of an obvious studio 'cave' set with a static camera. It looks like a dull stage play. This is a mess which looks like someone decided to rush through and be damned.

The plot bits in p4 about weaving an aluminium shell to 'deflect' a gravity 'beam' (or whatever) is very poor made up crappy crap.

Tom and Lalla veer wildly from disinterest to phoning it in.

For some reason Geoffrey Bayldon puts in a competent, entertaining and comic performance which is about the only watchable thing in this.

This would benefit greatly by losing about 2 episodes. The 'plot' about metal v. chorophyl is only so interesting and it seems to take 3.5 eps to be revealed but is worth about 1/2 an ep....


ABM Rating 1.55/4.00
LJM Rating 1.99/5.00
SPJ Rating 2.90/10   

No. 98 (out of 106)

Link to Cumulative Rankings


Rankings Scoreboard

105 City of Death

Started 24 Sep


This is easily the best of Series 17. It's fun to watch and is both interesting and engaging.

But it is no way the 4th or 5th best DW ever.

Big problems exist with the plot.
For instance Scaroth (who has been struggling for centuries to build a time machine) discovers the Doctor and Romana have a time machine early in p3 and then makes no attempt to steal the time machine or persuade or force the Doctor to use it for him. Why not? (He's not stupid...)

I'm not sure that lifeless slime plus spaceship explosion/radiation at 400 million years B.C. equals spark of life. Life is much older than this (eg. Stromatolites at 3700 million B.C.) and a single event like this is unlikely to have sparked life on earth generally. (More likely this Jagoroth event may have caused a mass extinction which usually generates great changes in evolutionary biology.)

Also the two minute time limit for the time transfer in ep4 is introduced arbitrarily by a throwaway line from Romana. Ugh...

The late night escape (early p3) from the scene of the Louvre robbery is unconvincing. ("See that window...")


The filming in Paris is a major innovation, even if it looks low budget and the extended running down the Champs Elysees scenes are used like padding.

The Jagoroth costume is clearly ludicrous. The Count/Countess relation free relationship is distinctly weird. It can only make sense in the context of the 30's Hays code for Hollywood movies. This is possibly one of a series of symbolic nods towards genre film. Others include gangster tropes, crime caper  films (eg. The Pink Panther) and Bulldog Drummond/Tintin (Look at Duggan's hair...)

Some performances are good in this. Julian Glover (Scarlioni etc) is good value, so are Catherine Schell (the Countess) and Tom Chadbon (Duggan).

Less convincing is David Graham as Kerensky and Kevin Flood as the Hermann the butler. Peter Halliday as the low budget Renaissance soldier seems odd casting.

But the story has verve and is very entertaining. Certainly the sky-high viewing figures in Britain suggest this even though they were clearly upped by the ITV strike at the time. (11 week blackout of the opposition channel...)

City of Death has THE highest average UK audience rating for any DW serial. Part 4 is still no.1 and Part 3 is no.2 on the all time highest rating list. Part 2 is no4. Part 1 is merely 25th on the list.  https://guide.doctorwhonews.net/info.php?detail=ratings

Ratings do not equal quality. Underworld had a high UK audience rating.

As we watched it the premiere of this serial had its 40th anniversary (UK 29-Sep-1979)


ABM Rating 3.45/4.00
LJM Rating 4.30/5.00
SPJ Rating 8.40/10   

No. 26 (out of 105)


Link to Cumulative Rankings


Rankings Scoreboard

104 Destiny of the Daleks

 Started 17-Sep


The almost entire absence of incidental music in this story makes this feel strangely atmospheric and alien.  (Contrast this with the approach next series!!)

The use of original 60's Radiophonic Workshop Skaro soundscapes is laudable. (I like it.)

There's a feature length edit version of this on the internet that emphasizes the downbeat low key atmosphere even more than the broadcast version.


The plot and the performances in this are not up to even the Graham Williams DW standard.

David Gooderson as Davros is noticeably less compelling than Michael Wisher. The idea that Davros has merely been 'asleep' for 1000 years or so (he was exterminated by the Daleks in Genesis p6) is ludicrous, even for DW. But get over it to get the story happening... ok.

The Movellans are played as "moving wallpaper" dummies. They are profoundly uninteresting.

The Dalek slaves are cliched and uninvolving. There's a fun game to play of spot the reused costume. The mashups are bizarre. (eg. Voc Robot mixed with Karn Sister AND Mentiad).  In a first for DW I think it's significant that the casting is distinctly non-white in this story. It sets a tone for future DW casts that continues to the present day. Up to this point there are whole series of DW without a single black or asian face. Suddenly there are lots and it stays that way. Also significant is the first time females are shown to be exterminated by Daleks.

Tyssan shows some endeavour but comes off as slightly weird.

The Dalek props are in awful condition. The bashes and damage are far too obvious for close-ups. The ep4 plastic shell Daleks (which are used for the explosions) are obviously being walked by stage hands (you can see feet and gait like oscillation) in various shots in the quarry.

Tom's performance since seems off hand, irritated and he resorts to zany far too often.

Lalla is trying hard as the 'girl' version of the Doctor. (Look how she is dressed.) But the character comes across as a bit wet. (She gets better in later stories.)

The main achievement of this story is the direction. The first use use of the steadi-cam and the 'creeper' (camera low and close to the floor) shot of the Daleks especially is exciing and imaginative. It leads to lots of (intentional) camera movement. Also noticeable is the thoughtful shot constuction especialy Daleks in the central control area. The director is DW one time director Ken Grieve, who says in his DVD interview that he was a former cameraman. The impression this gives is a thoughtful and technically adept shooting of a story he didn't really try to understand.

Also significant is the post modern use of studio lights in the ruined Dalek city corridor shots. Many have criticized the 'visible' studio lights in the Dalek underground areas as production errors but they are mistaken.The sets for the Dalek city are very good and feature the arty blurring of the line between studio and set. That is progress, DW fans!

Destiny is a fairly boring story. The plot has flaws (why are Daleks and Movellans bound by strategic logic, other than they just are...) Significantly this story mistakes Daleks for logic slave *robots*. Daleks are insane. That's what makes them scary.

Some of the ideas and characters aren't original or the best (that's Terry Nation) and the plot is underdeveloped (that's Douglas Adams). But it's Daleks and quarries so it looks like DW. Technically there are a number of very cool innovations that point a way forward for DW in the 80's.



ABM Rating 2.10/4.00
LJM Rating 2.26/5.00
SPJ Rating 5.30/10   

No. 86 (out of 104)

Link to Cumulative Rankings

Rankings Scoreboard

103 The Armageddon Factor

Started 9-Sep

Part 1 is the 500th episode.

This is no where near as bad as some people make out.

Let's try to deal with some of these criticisms.

1. It's slow paced. (So is Talons of Weng Chiang).

This is the last ever 6 parter. The story must be played out in steps to last 6 eps. The last few 6 parters (Invasion, Seeds especially) have had dog leg plots to make up the extra eps. Some people try to segmentise Armageddon also but I think that's not right. It progresses from Atrios to Zeos then to the hidden planet. That is all.

2. It's hard to follow in places. (So is The War Games.)

Like many other Series 16 stories there are no 'monsters'. The drama and the scary threat thing is a overwhelming war with interplanetary carpet bombing. This is difficult to present on DW's end of series budget but the show does not do too badly. The battle presented in p2 is dots on a screen and battle cruiser pilot commentary. The story is being told in the viewers imagination. This would be very different on a 'Star Wars' budget.
The Time loop and the mysterious computer controlled Zeons make the story less than straightforward. The hidden third planet elevates the story's sophistication level to something well above cartoons or Star Wars. The hidden third force stirring up the actual war gives the story an Orwellian element that makes it superior Sci Fi in my opinion.

3. The characters are wasted. (So is most DW)

You could criticize characters like Drax or the Shadow for being unfunny or unscary but that isn't very fair. Shapp started out sensible but had a some ridiculous moments late in the serial. The Marshall got caught in the time loop for 3 episodes and did not have a payoff scene but was formidable, dramatically played and ominous in p1 and p2. Astra and Merak did get a pay off scene but it seemed a bit wet to be honest. K9 had a prominent role and was used well (for a change).

4. The ending is trivial and unsatisfying.


A frequent complaint... Actually neither the 'goodies' or the 'baddies' won in the end.
What was the ending meant to be? 'God' gets pleased and peace, light, fruity platters and bunnies prevail for all and ever and all eternity... which is nice... or the opposite (sponsored by the Devil?).... or everything is back to its confusing, incomplete and partly good, partly bad 'normal' state. (This sounds right to me.)

Did the 'balance' or order get restored? Were the White Guardian minions working on the issue in any of the microseconds that the key was assembled and active? Well I hope so, otherwise the whole project was something of a waste of time. The story ignores this issue. Maybe the Key to Time rescattered to the corners of the universe with neither Guardian ascendant over the other IS order restored and balanced. This conclusion is implied. A stated conclusion would actually be very difficult to present credibly.

This is much better if watched one ep at a time. We luckily stuck to one ep a night for a week or so.

There are some ep endings which are epic. e.g. p3 . Part 5 is letting the side down a bit but...

The atmosphere in p1 is doom-ey and amazing. The feeling of Armageddon (indeed the premise of the story) is expressed by Tom early in p4 in a very Douglas-sy kind of way (i.e. accessible and whip smart). Also ep4 has a (mostly) unrecognised re-edit of a reprise. That hasn't been seen since Barry Letts was on the show. (I love that sorta stuff.)

• DOCTOR: There will be a rather large bang, big enough to blow up Zeos, take Atrios with it, and make certain the whole thing ends in a sort of draw. That's the way these military minds work. The Armageddon factor.

This isn't perfect but it's far from terrible. In the Williams era that is a pretty good result.


ABM Rating 3.48/4.00
LJM Rating 3.40/5.00
SPJ Rating 7.40/10   

Link to Cumulative Rankings
No. 45 (out of 103)

Rankings Scoreboard


from http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/5f.html

The story of Tom's threatened departure (Dec 1978/Jan 1979) Production began on The Armageddon Factor amidst simmering tensions behind the scenes. In early October, Baker had informed Williams that he would be leaving Doctor Who, a result of the actor's perceived lack of input in what he increasingly viewed as “his” programme. At the same time, Head of Drama Graeme McDonald had advised Williams to fire Baker. Towards the end of October, however, a détente was reached, with Baker agreeing to table his resignation until further discussions could be held. Meanwhile, Williams also found himself uncertain as to the status of his other regular, with Mary Tamm remaining noncommittal on the topic of returning to Doctor Who for Season Seventeen. To make matters worse, it was becoming clear that the BBC was about to be subjected to another round of industrial action, something which had previously plagued the recording of The Invasion Of Time one year earlier.

At around the same time, Williams met with Tamm and her agent in an effort to clarify her status for Season Seventeen. Williams was eager to retain the actress, but she felt that Romana had not been developed as fully as had been promised. There had originally been suggestions that Romana might be an expert in disciplines such as archery and karate, but Tamm felt that Romana had instead degenerated into just another screaming companion. Despite Williams' efforts, however, he was still unable to secure a firm decision from Tamm.

Aware of the situation, Baker offered his own -- intentionally bizarre -- ideas in case Romana did not return the next year. Unhappy with being saddled with a companion in the first place, Baker suggested that the Doctor could wander around with a talking creature -- a parrot or even a cabbage -- perched on his shoulder, to whom he could explain the plot. Alternatively, Baker thought it would be interesting to cast a very different kind of companion: a portly, out of shape woman in the vein of Miriam Margolyes.

The final recording session for The Armageddon Factor took place from December 3rd to 5th. This involved all of the scenes set on the Shadow's planet, with the TARDIS material taped on the final day (which also marked the end of Doctor Who's sixteenth production block). Williams opted to proceed as if Tamm would be returning the next year. Tamm herself, however, was now leaning towards leaving the show, and proposed to Ward that she might take over as a new incarnation of Romana. This suggestion came much to the delight of Baker, who had become very fond of Ward.

Finally, in mid-December, Tamm informed Williams that she would not be returning to Doctor Who; her departure was confirmed to the press on December 16th.


In addition to her theatrical work, Tamm continued to make numerous appearances on television, including Jonathan Creek, Agatha Christie's Poirot, The New Adventures Of Robin Hood and Doctors. Starting in 2005, Tamm returned to the role of Romana for Big Finish Production, appearing in the Gallifrey and Companion Chronicle ranges. Tamm subsequently recorded a season of new adventures opposite Baker as the Fourth Doctor for release in 2013, but before these could be released, the actress finally succumbed to a long battle with cancer. Tamm passed away on July 26th, 2012.

Anthony Read had also finished up his Doctor Who duties by this stage. He would continue writing for television, including episodes of The Professionals and Sapphire & Steel, as well as The Horns Of Nimon for Doctor Who's seventeenth season. Read also adapted the John Wyndham novel Chocky and served as script editor on Hammer House Of Horror. In addition, Read became a prolific novelist, with publications including the Baker Street Boys series and several books about Nazi Germany, some of them written with his Doctor Who collaborator, David Fisher (author of The Stones Of Blood and The Androids Of Tara). Read passed away on November 21st, 2015.


Meanwhile, Williams was still trying to deal with Baker. The star had been offered a contract for Season Seventeen on December 15th, but after two weeks had still not acted upon it, apparently because he demanded to first be informed as to the identity of his new co-star -- even though the casting process for the new companion likely wouldn't take place until well into the New Year. Williams was now increasingly of the opinion that Baker had played the Doctor for too long, and asked his agent for a final decision on Season Seventeen by January 4th, 1979. This ultimatum was the final straw as far as Baker was concerned; he wrote to Graeme McDonald to renew his resignation unless he was given more power behind the scenes, and also decried the way he was being treated by Williams. The producer, in turn, informed McDonald that he would quit if Baker's demands were met. At last, McDonald brought Baker and Williams together to clear the air. Following this meeting, Baker finally agreed to a new contract on January 15th -- having been granted none of his demands for control over scripts, directors or casting.

Nonetheless, a few days later Baker was delighted to learn that Tamm's suggestion had been taken up, and Lalla Ward was being cast as a regenerated Romana. A new incarnation of Romana had not been Williams' only option: he had also considered introducing a brand new character, and had even toyed with the idea of casting a different actress as Romana in each serial (although this would have created storyline havoc in terms of devising reasons for each regeneration, and made continuity between stories very difficult). Ward was contracted for Season Seventeen on January 24th, and a photocall was held on February 6th.

102 The Power of Kroll

Started 4-Sep

Rubbish.

Buried under a metric sh-- ton of shlock is a neo-colonialist screed (possibly) but it's a cliched and boring one. (It's neo-colonialist because the refinery guys do what they do for reasons of industrial profit rather than political domination but I'm not sure it matters...)

The script is flat, the dialogue is flat, the acting is flat. The plot is corny and seems vaguely reminiscent of Colony in Space or The Mutants or some crap Tarzan story.. (Miners trying to dispossess indigenous people.)

Robert Holmes has written this in a hurry or he's bored with DW or something... it's a very under-par effort.

Weirdly this is the **only** monster story in Series 16.

Tom is close to taking the piss is most scenes. Can't say I blame him... Some of the jokes he's making are pretty crap. Tom's best bit is the commentary on what he believes is Early Samoan architecture in the hut where the fifth holy ritual is taking place. It's banal and almost doesn't work. But it makes a terribly cliched scene at least a little interesting.

These vine breaking scenes in p3 (from 3m00s to about 14m00s) are a mix of bulls--t, Edgar Rice Burroughs and unbelievable coincidence. The story takes place over a day and a half or so (I think) and apparently 'it rains all the time' yet it only rained once and for a few minutes when convenient. The glass shattering nonsense is just nonsense. (p3 13m27s to 13.45s) The shots of Doctor, Romana and Rohm Dutt escaping after this show dry ground and blue skies.... um, basic film continuity error?

A reasonable cast. Not very good performances. Neil McCarthy (Mind of Evil), Phillip Madoc (Brain of Morbius etc), John Abineri (Ambassadors of Death, Fury From The Deep etc), Glyn Owen (B7 Spacefall an 40 years of other TV roles), Carl Rigg (James Bond 1987 The Living Daylights) all phoning it in. Can't say I blame 'em...

Mary is trying her best to look ok in most shots but her dialogue is not real kind and she has next to nothing to do.

Hey, how do the swampies make little swampies? There are no girl swampies...

Direction is up to Norman Stewart's previous standard (Undeworld). The swampies appear at the refinery in p4 (10m18s) and there's no set up scene where they decide to do this. (Actually I'm wrong it's at 5m53s. 4.5 minutes before in a episode 22m01s long with 1.5m intro/outro and 1.5m reprise....means that's why I missed it.)

Location work is distinctive but wasted.

Optical effects: Kroll horizon shots are incompetent and risible. There's a shot in p2 (DVD 14m03s) where a Swampie's head is cut off by the join in the picture!!! Unbelievable!!

Visual Effects: Whenever the tentacle appears and grabs any character there's some kind of obvious 'climbing' into the pipe while wrapping the tentacle around themselves sequence. Some terrible edits frequently make these scenes even worse.

The Kroll hedge based squid tentacle puppet theatre stuff in p4 (2m54s to about 3m10s) is **the** worst visual effect in 70's Who. (It has some competition...)

Model effects aren't great (which isn't new) but the director/editor leaves lingering shots of the model refinery on screen which really suck the suspense from the story. Try p4 12m12s to 12m20s.... it's not the only one.

The sets on the refinery are very, very wobbly and rough and cheap. The perspective of the studio camera makes it look like the control room is enormous and the tech guys are crowded around the control desk. Weirdly there's no equipment mess strewn about the place. None at all. According to legend the set designer Don Giles was subsequently disbarred from working on DW ever again by the BBC Controller Graeme McDonald.

This is easily the weakest Series 16 story for many reasons. Is the budget running dry? Like the fifth story from last year it has THE BEST UK ratings of the series. (p2 had 12.4 million tune in on 30 Dec 1978.)


p.s. Reviewer fact Check no 4031

Gareth Roberts writes in DWM 298: "This is the only Doctor Who story based around farts."

Squids on earth (so not necessarily equivalent to Kroll) don't fart as a by product of digestion like most mammals. Most mammal or human farts contain hydrogen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and sulfurous gases (with the latter responsible for much of the smell). Methane is the by product of anaerobic vegetable decomposition not squid farts.

Sorry Gareth...


ABM Rating 1.60/4.00
LJM Rating 1.99/5.00
SPJ Rating 1.52/10    
No. 95 (out of 102)


Link to Cumulative Rankings


Rankings Scoreboard

101 The Androids of Tara

Started 1-Sep

This is "The Prisoner of Zenda" except they're everywhere....no less than 4 Princess Strellas/Romanas/androids.

The Prisoner of Zenda is a dreadful, old fashioned Victorian era novel which was barely credible when it was originally published in 1894. Amazingly it has been remade as movies on numerous occasions in the 20th century. Take a look at this list on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_of_Zenda#Adaptations). I guess it has some fairy tale type appeal. Significantly there has not been any notable remakes in the last 35 years which suggests that the appeal has dimmed. (Or maybe a comeback is imminent..?)

The Androids of Tara is a sci-fi themed mash up of androids and made up Ruritania on a foreign planet. The story is *very* padded out. I'll cite the last part of p3 as a major and obvious unnecessary plot fork that seems to waste screen time to get to 4 episodes.

The plot elements of crowning Reinhardt and thwarting Gracht's plan to marry off and then bump off Reinhardt and Strella are established by the end of p1 and take fully two episodes to happen. That is constipated... slow, painful and the result is... sh*t disappointing.

The jokes are "meh" to ok. The acting is rigid and hammy. (Neville Jason as Reinhardt in the dungeon is pure ham. He acts like he's in a sketch comedy show.) In p1 and 2 the Doctor makes some interesting asides about what androids think of human behaviour in a way that appears to prefigure Blade Runner (1981).

Peter Jeffrey is given licence to twirl his moustache and takes full advantage but it seems like he knows it's fluff. The season maguffin is sorted out (more or less) in the first 5 minutes of p1. Madame Lamia is the nearest there is to an interesting character and she gets wasted in p3 before her 'story' has a chance to be told.

We're left with a tedious story about a bad prince makes the good prince marry the android (or something like that) to achieve his own evils before being thwarted by the heroic stranger (the Doctor).


Tom and Peter's sword fight in p4 is overlong, not credible and not spectacular to watch. If Pertwee and Delgado in the Seas Devils p2 was indulgent this was worse. And not well directed....


The sci fi aspect is also neglected. Why are there Androids on Tara? Where do they get their (electrical) power? I saw no power points or distribution systems. Or any self contained solar/wind type power plants or fuel cells. How are the Androids manufactured? Where do the Taran peasants get plastic, aluminium, fibreglass, or whatever else the androids are built from? Potentially I think there might be quite a good SF story here about how the peasants are the hi-tech android makers but the wealth and the power is retained (somehow) by the feudal Lords, Princes and their similarly non-technical lackeys.


In Europe (and generally on Earth) hi-tech electronics and computers and all other secondary industry (from textiles to silicon chips) historically have turned the peasant class into the middle class and the consequence is mass elected republics or limited constitutional monarchies. Political power favours rich people with inherited industrial wealth not long term dynastic royal traditions. Consider the history of Japan, Russia, France, Britain, Germany.... there are *some* exceptions but there aren't many feudal countries on Earth in 2019... maybe Bhutan or Thailand... even Afghanistan has a republic, even if it is dominated by fundamentalist religious insurgents. (Australia is more of a "branch office"....)


How has this distinctive society developed and how is it sustained in a stable way? Interplanetary tourism and trade? A very cool inversion of the Ruritania (i.e. backwards, lacking in progress) regal identity conspiracy story trope could have been sparked here by thinking about these questions. What if Madame Lamia had survived? (Perhaps she's really a self aware android who can then lead an android revolution to overthrow the feudals and become President of Tara... and make Gracht serve the tea... I'd pay to watch that...)

But no, a stupid sword fight...

Androids is disappointing and a bit of a yawn, frankly. It's well enough made but unimaginative.

And I did not say anything about the Taran Wood Beast...



ABM Rating 2.40/4.00
LJM Rating 3.25/5.00
SPJ Rating 4.50/10


No. 78 (out of 101)


Link to Cumulative Rankings

Rankings Scoreboard

100 The Stones of Blood

 Started 27-Aug

Competent mystery thriller but dating fast.

The chanting druid doods are back and there's not much new there. There's some variation of chanting semi religious assembly in too many Williams/Read productions.
Famed old time British actor Beatrix Lehman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Lehmann) makes what turned out to be her final screen appearance as the little old lady archeologist. The performance is charming and accomplished (watch the eyes) but the character seems out of place. Nevertheless this is the standout guest star appearance of series 16.

Mary is great to watch and a rival for screen real estate with Tom.
Tom is angry and raging through most of the script. The story director Darrol Blake tells of Tom's domestic habits on the DVD making of doco makes you wonder about his state of life. Susan Engels as Viven Fay is merely adequate and not very impressive. He comes across as patrician rather than suspicious or menacing.

The other roles are unremarkable.

I think swapping roles for Engels and Lehman would have been a good move. Cutting the DeVries (both of them) altogether would have helped too.

The hyperspace stuff is fantasy, made up rubbish. Nothing to do with Einstein at all. But this is DW so I guess it comes with the territory.

The Ogri are presented as classic DW monsters but they are ridiculous when subject to the scrutiny of any rational analysis. How do they move? What 'biological' process makes them awaken? There's a throwaway line in p2 their origin on a planet in Tau Ceti and that they survive there on the contents of amino acid pools...(oh yes..) and the nearest equivalent is human blood (globulin)... well it isn't. The nearest equivalent is seawater or maybe brackish swamp water... but how does it work? It doesn't.

The way the Ogri suddenly appear in p2 seems to be missing a setup scene.

Also the shot of the Ogri scooting past the studio set window is repeated in p2 and p4. It looks pantomime to me.... come to think of it the smashing through wooden doors get used more than once as well.

The Megara are fun but they come out in p3 and 4 as a way to stretch out the plot. They are realised in a simple but imaginative new way. The actual effect was done by Mat Irvine holding an apparatus with two sets of circling reflective balls on a frame with a pair of bright lights which flashed according to the dialogue (like Daleks). This was half keyed into the regular scene by semi fade while the other actors left a gap in the scene.
Nowadays, you wouldn't even think of doing it that way. It'd be green screen and CGI for sure.

The story is set in the "present" but the forty years since have not been kind. The stuff with the missing portraits and Viven Fay's backstory identity is fascinating but in the 21st century, would be quickly solved by Googling not any brilliant deductive insight.

Likewise the uncertainty about the number of stones would be much more easily verified. (Here's the wikipedia site for the location https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollright_Stones) Indeed the Rumford/Fay stones survey would be done by remote sensing and proper spatial surveying, not silly notes in little books. It seems ridiculous that such a survey would even be necessary nowadays.

This is some variation of what novelists call the pre-mobile phone effect.

The real world would have some serious questions for Professor Rumford after the story finishes. Dead bodies at the camp site and the stones, all that damage at the Manor house, no sign of Miss Fay and she's been eating her sausage sandwiches. What happened? Er, yeah....well, there was this Doctor and a robot dog....and some homicidal, moving giant rocks.

But the story is interesting and engaging even if the ending is a little anticlimactic and unsatisfying...

The 100th DW story is routine and unremarkable. We've had three good ones in a row. That's about Graham Williams' limit isn't it?


ABM Rating 3.40/4.00
LJM Rating 4.25/5.00
SPJ Rating 9.10/10   

Link to Cumulative Rankings
No. 20 (out of 100)

Rankings Scoreboard

099 The Pirate Planet

Started 21-Aug

Moons of madness!!!

There's something almost lyrically poetic about some of the dialogue in this.

It is recognisable Adams.

Try this

• (Out in the plaza, Romana is using a telescope to get a better look at the metal building up above them. A guard walks up to her and takes it away.)
• GUARD: This is a forbidden object.
• ROMANA: Why?
• GUARD: That is a forbidden question. You are a stranger?
• ROMANA: Well, yes.
• GUARD: Strangers are forbidden.
• ROMANA: I did come with the Doctor.
• GUARD: Who is
• ROMANA: Ah, now, don't tell me. Doctors are forbidden as well. 

As well as the beautiful brevity of the scene and the arch way the guard plays it it is just great drama. It sets up questions like: why are telescopes forbidden? why are the Captain's guards so anxious to ban things? Romana's learning about Zanak quickly. That's great storytelling.

The scenes in p1 where the Doctor fails to attract the attention of Zanak passers by, then Romana does it without any trouble at all, then when the Doctor tries again they actually start running away is actually one of the funniest DW scenes ever filmed.

Here's another favourite (from p2):

• ROMANA: You mean you knew they were here? You knew that this mountain's really a spaceship and it's broken down?
• DOCTOR: More or less, yes.
• ROMANA: But how? How did you know?
• DOCTOR: Well, I just put one point seven nine five three seven two and two point two oh four six two eight together.
• ROMANA: And what does that mean?
• DOCTOR: Four!
• ROMANA: Four!

The story is a compelling mixture.
It has pathos and heft.

• DOCTOR: Then it's the most brilliant piece of astro-gravitational engineering I've ever seen. The concept is simply staggering. Pointless, but staggering.
• CAPTAIN: I'm gratified that you appreciate it.
• DOCTOR: Appreciate it? Appreciate it? What, you commit mass destruction and murder on a scale that's almost inconceivable and you ask me to appreciate it? Just because you happen to have made a brilliantly conceived toy out of the mummified remains of planets
• CAPTAIN: Devil storms, Doctor! It is not a toy!
• DOCTOR: What's it for? Huh? What are you doing? What could possibly be worth all this?

But it has B movie plotting...  'evil' mentiads, crap laser gun fights and blowing up the Captain's Bridge/Castle are dull tropes.

And part 4 falls away with bafflegab explanations and an explosion which makes the story feel unresolved and the viewer let down unfairly somewhat.

Also it is known that the filming of this started with scripts for p3 and 4 undelivered. Douglas was struggling to meet deadlines even this early in his career.

But this is pretty brilliant otherwise and seems kinda modern in 2019. A lot of the fan criticism of it stems from timid conservatism. (That is a trend which will er,... develop.) But I think it's fair to say that it might have been even better with a bit more thoughtful plotting.




ABM Rating 3.60/4.00
LJM Rating 4.25/5.00
SPJ Rating 9.80/10   

Link to Cumulative Rankings
No. 11 (out of 99)

Rankings Scoreboard

098 The Ribos Operation

 Started 17-Aug


Liked it.

A neat and satisfying story with great characters and performance.

Lots of sparkling dialogue.

Monster's a bit rubbish...

Mary makes an impressive debut. Tom is showing signs of irascibility.

Direction is a bit haphazard. The ep ends are strangely flat.

A good example of story over effects.

The key to time idea is new but it boils down to a giant maguffin.


ABM Rating 3.60/4.00
LJM Rating 4.49/5.00
SPJ Rating 9.68/10  

No. 9 (out of 98)

Link to Cumulative Rankings


Rankings Scoreboard

Well hello boys....

My tongue is getting a bit dry...

Season 15 autopsy

Season 15 has lurched to an ignoble end. There are 26 episodes like the previous year. Tom is still the Doctor. The UK TV ratings are still amazing. The budget is under control (to the extent that it can be under control in the 1977 UK economy with 20% inflation.)

I think we've got our blog ratings pretty right. 2 all time clangers (Underworld, Invisible E), a struggler (Invasion), 1 reserve grade (Image), 2 minor classics (neither of them near THE top) (Horror, SunM's)

But the quality of the scripts is a serious problem. It shows what a remarkable achievement the previous 8 series has actually been. The script mess is not unprecedented (hello Series 6) nor is it never gonna happen again (hello series 23).

The series average rating from the DW Marathon Blog has mostly maintained or increased every series since John Wiles reign.

The series 15 plunge from mid 80's to high 50's is sudden and unprecedented. But it might be a thing made of the statistics. Arguably if the top and bottom scores are removed we've still got another horrible clanger and a classic. The average rating is a product of DUAL clangers in a short 6 serial season. (Series 3 had 3 clangers out of 10 with 2 good and the rest very ho-hum. Series 13 had a clanger too and ended up no.2 on the list.)

Series	DW MBlog      Avg. Rating
1	58.2%
2	64.8%
3	54.1%
4	67.2%
5	69.2%
6	60.3%
7	77.4%
8	72.3%
9	72.1%
10	72.2%
11	72.6%
12	76.0%
13	83.5%
14	84.8%
15	57.1%

80% + = classic!

70-80% = 1st division

60-70% = 2nd division

50-60% = 3rd division

40-50% = trouble

<40% = clanger!!

It was an amazing run. It had to end. But this way? This bad?  Unlike in Series 4 the climb back will be long and hard, full of false dawns and not all in the right direction.

But why? Was it the (effective) sacking of Hinchcliffe? Was it the way Robert Holmes' departure was managed? Is Anthony Read a unsuitable as script editior? (Alongside other DW script editors he does seem a bit second division....) Clearly the handover of script editors is reminiscent of Series 11. But the biggest obvious difference is the new guy has never worked on DW before. If the script ed had been Robert Banks Stewart or Chris Boucher or even Bob Baker he would have coped better with script fall throughs. (He'd have seen it happen before, at least.)

Is Graham Williams a poor producer or just failing to achieve when faced with the impossible?  If George Gallacio or David Maloney had been appointed producer then maybe someone with a bit more care for the product would be in charge.

Given the budget troubles they may not have had any better success however. It is very f-ing hard to be innovative and have artistic integrity when headaches about how to pay the bills take over the daily agenda. There is a rumour that the 26 episodes of Series 15 had a 40% budget cut compared to Series 14 ON TOP of the rampant inflation. If that's true the miracle is that there's 26 episodes at all, not whether they're any good or not.



The decade of DW's unalloyed excellence is over. It's hegemony is just beginning.

The world of SF (movies and TV) is waking up. Before 1977 the highest grossing movies were things like Gone With The Wind. Now in 2019 Avengers Endgame just passed Avatar as the highest money taking reel of moving pictures ever. The rest of the Top 10 are all SF/Fantasy. That change started with Star Wars in 1977/78.

It's well recognised that el cheapo DW suffers and suffered in comparison to Industrial Light and Magic but I think it's possible to argue that DW also prospered (overall) because of the increased popularity of (and demand for) SF and fantasy movies and TV.

There's still more than a decade of classic DW to come. There will be moments when we don't want to go on ("Where is the Chimeron queen? ") and others when resurrection and redemption are acting in unison ("-One of the readings is ectopic, sir. -What does that mean? -That one of the lifeforms has two hearts"...)  Some of it is memorable and among the best of the series.  Other bits less so but we've discovered in this blog that the early days were not completely perfect either. And the new series is more than a quarter of a century away yet.

479 episodes down, 372 to go. Not even close to finished.

Are we having fun yet? This is gonna get a bit harder from here.

097 The Invasion of Time

 Started 10-Aug

What a glorious mess!

The tone is actually very good.
The feeling is sparse, empty, lonely. There are scene setting scenes which serve to make Gallifrey seem to be 'on the top of a high mountain' or something.

John Arnatt as Borusa and, to a lesser extent, Milton Johns as Kelner are the apparatchiks of a corrupt, useless, fossilised bureaucracy.

Hilary Ryan is good as Rodan at the start but suffers from being crowded out as the narrative gathers a crowd (of guards, Shobogans and other Time Lords) in ep4,5,6.

The actual plot is exciting and fast paced but is entirely inexplicable and unexplained. Sure the Doctor's aim is duplicitous. He's tricking the Vardans all along. And then the Sontarans seem to trick 'em both. And it all serves as a direct challenge to the viewer (whether casual or deep dive fan) which strains the credulity to the limit.

But why? There's not even a line (even "...anarchy for Gallifrey, is coming someday") which suggests why this particular strategy is ideal, better or even mildly advantageous. And that makes the story so hollow.

Whatever the lack of logic behind the strategy is, morally it's appalling considering the consequential, indiscriminate loss of life.

By the last two eps this is even worse. The plot in ep5&6 is basically Sontarans chase the good guys for this new Maguffin, the Great key.. referred to earlier in ep2 in a throwaway line but otherwise pointless and never heard of again..

In both last 2 eps there are several scenes which seem to lack basic continuity with those around them. The script is a mess with corny, boring lines and made-up maguffin-ey "fiddle about with the shields" rubbish which seems to serve no other purpose than to pad out time.

The conclusion is just bizarrely silly. Stor's 'fission' grenade which threatens to destroy an entire galaxy is one (dopey) thing but the scene before the Sontaran leader decides to give up, commit hara-kiri and take everyone and everything with him, they had just made some progress by switching off the interference inhibiting their tracker technology. So a development followed by... let's cut to a stupid confrontation. And Doctor uses a super ray gun... to destroy just one Sontaran and then (by magic?) he gets amnesia.... then Leela decides to give up trying by marrying the first guard guy she meets..... The last two eps lose this half a point and that's generous. The end of ep6 is pretty lame.

Tom's performance has changed markedly over the course of this series. He is barely recognisable since the serious dramatic Mr Grumpity of Horror of Fang Rock. He looks frustrated. As if someone is forced to tell him to 'just shutup and say the lines, Tom' on a daily basis.

Leela bows out in a ridiculous move that rivals Dodo's exit for carelessness. Any excuse to stay would have been better than romance with Andred (as played by the very gay Chris Tranchell.) How about a job offer from Rodan's boss? Or a Shobogan kidnap? Or the CIA recruit her as a security consultant? At least any of those would have a shred of credibility.

Louise Jameson is very professional actor who made a damned good fist of some atrocious writing especially in the second year. Like Elisabeth Sladen she missed out on a genre career. Unlike Elisabeth she did go on to regular roles in other big TV shows (Tenko, The Omega Factor, Bergerac, Eastenders, Doc Martin )

She has personal achievement on her resume as well. Her volunteer job as a prison visitor and her part in the reform of Les Grantham (Kiston in Resurrection of the Daleks) is little short of heroic. At Christmas 1986, an alltime record UK TV audience (30.15 million) watched Les as Den Watts in Eastenders serve divorce papers on Angie Watts. There is a movie in that guy's life too.

Anyhow.... beware the Black Guardian....beware.


ABM Rating 2.02/4.00
LJM Rating 2.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 4.70/10   

No. 82 (out of 97)

Link to Cumulative Rankings


Rankings Scoreboard

096 Underworld

 Started 4-Aug

Steam punk Bananas in Pyjamas, yesterday...

We watched the DVD transcribed xvid files. One episode at a time. That is genuinely as much as anyone can take at any one time.


Some DW's can be greedily yummed up 2 eps at a time. Some are a chore. This is like eating manure with bits of broken glass in it.

It's boring.
It's badly written.
It's badly directed.
It's boring.
It's badly acted.
It has 3 of the most unexciting episode cliffhangers ever. (There are mid episode ABCtv version season 22 "timing cut" cliffhangers which are better than these 3...and they're random)
Did I mention it's boring?
The bit with guards running (including a stumble) being repeated over and over.

The P7E planet (referred to in draft scripts as Hadis, luckily not called this on screen) is a very unbelievable idea. It should be hot, liquid magma not boring self illuminated CSO 'caves'.... 

How long have the trog slaves been eating (processed) rock?

The minor character Tala has precisely 3 lines in eps 2 and 3.

In p2....
TALA: Captain, the fuel's going.

TALA: Captain, the fuel's gone.

In p3...

TALA: Who was he?


And all these in p4 !!!
TALA: Captain.

TALA: We've enough to get away, but it'll be a slow journey.

TALA: Five, four, three, two, one.

TALA: Drive running.

TALA: I'm trying.

TALA: There is no more.

TALA: We don't have enough power to reach escape velocity.

TALA: Four sevenths light.


And Tala's lines are not even the shortest role or the most underwritten. Try Naia or Idmon. This indicates, apart from anything else, why this is boring.


What is the Oracle? Why? Where did it come from?

The plot is all holes. There's two whole episodes of run up a corridor/cave, get captured, escape, run up a corridor, repeat.

And did I say it was boring?

Short guide to symbolic naming in Underworld (this is the only thing that's any fun in this)

• Ankh is the Eqyptian Goddess of Fertility
• Lakh is the Indian number 100 000.
• The Oracle = the Delphic Oracle, aka the Pythia which gave prophecies only on the seventh day of each month, seven being the number most associated with Apollo.
• P7E = Persephone
• R1C = Argo-sey, (a sort of nick name for the journey of the Argo, as in Odys-sey....)
• Minyans = Minoans
• Jackson = Jason (played by James Maxwell a noted Manchester theatre director (so wasted in this))
• Herrick = Heracles (played by third husband of Diana Dors (he called her Madame Tits and Lips) his life was tragedy heaped upon outrage (the biopic movie is still waiting to be made however and it will be a humdinger!) (so wasted in this))
• Orfe = Orpheus (played by prolific tv and film actor Jonathan Newth, he's the blind Doctor in Day of the Triffids (1981)  (so wasted in this))
• Tala = Atalanta or Talaus (played by Imogen Bickford-Smith who is immortal as Mr Johnson's smuggled girfriend in the Fawlty Towers ep. about Psychiatrists ("Mr Fawlty.. he get ladder to see in room to see girl...") curiously another almost non-speaking part (even so she is wasted in this))
• Rask = nineteenth-century Danish philologist Ramus Rask (played by James Marcus who was a Droog in A Clockwork Orange (1971) (so wasted in this))
• Tarn = nineteenth-century French poet Pauline Tarn (played by prolific film and tv actor Godfrey James (so wasted in this))
• Klimt = early twentieth-century Austrian painter Gustav Klimt (played by DW bit part regular Jay Neill (so wasted in this))
• Clashing Rocks = Symplegades, also called the Clashing (or Cyanean) Rocks. These were large boulders situated along the Bosphorus which haphazardly smashed into one another, destroying any ship which was caught in-between
• Idmon = In Greek mythology, Idmon (in Ancient Greek, means "having knowledge of") was an Argonaut seer. Idmon foresaw his own death in the Argonaut expedition, but joined anyway. (played by noted film bit part actor Jimmy Gardner (he was 53 when he appeared in Underworld... no way!)) (so wasted in this)
•  Idas = In Greek mythology a Messenian prince. He was one of the Argonauts, a participant in the hunt for the Calydonian Boar and contender with the gods. Idas was described as keen and spirited (played by Norman Tipton who is famous for TV ads in the UK  (so wasted in this))
•  Naia = popular name given to 12000yo human skeleton discovered in Yucatan in 2007 (so not actually a 1977 idea!!) (played by Stacey Tendeter who was famous for appearing in Francois Truffaut's Two English Girls (1971)) (so wasted in this...)

In it's favour is the UK ratings which were strong. (8.9, 9.1, 8.9 and 11.7 million viewers for each respective episode...best serial average for Series 15 and the single highest episode rating of Series 15.)
The episode running times are very short. 22m36s, 21m27s, 22m21s, 22m53s. Three of those are in the bottom 50 running times for DW eps. Lots of other serials have one quite short episode. The average running time of 22m24s is the 4th lowest in DW history.)

Here's the bottom 10

Rank	Title	Serial avg running time minutes
1	The Mind Robber	21m24s
2	Meglos	21m42s
3	The Leisure Hive	21m42s
4	Underworld	22m24s
5	The Krotons	22m36s
6	The Power of Kroll	22m48s
7	The Space Museum	22m54s
8	Full Circle	23m12s
9	The Invisible Enemy	23m18s
10	The Wheel In Space	23m24s

A low score and an alarming downward plunge.

1978 has arrived. Series 15 has two very awful serials so far. What of the last six-parter?





ABM Rating 0.75/4.00
LJM Rating 0.75/5.00
SPJ Rating 3.90/10   

No. 94 (out of 96) (equal lowest rank with Invisible Enemy)(Celestial Toymaker is still worse.)

Link to Cumulative Rankings


Rankings Scoreboard


http://www.pagefillers.com/dwrg/underwo.htm
accessed 8-8-2019

 "Whatever blows can be sucked!" by Hugh Sturgess 12/9/12

Oh, come on! The Doctor actually said that?! It's so brazen it's practically a single entendre.

Anyway, onto the story. It's awful. Absolutely dire. I watched this hoping to enjoy it on some level, but it's impossible. My mind feels hollow. Warriors of the Deep and its ilk at least are engagingly bad; Underworld flatlines almost instantly, but, like a zombie, lurches along at that (I guess appropriately) subterranean level of tedium for the rest of the four trudging episodes.

At this point in Season Fourteen, The Robots of Death was being shown. My God, how the mighty are fallen! This isn't even the worst story of Season Fifteen, when one remembers The Invisible Enemy (also by Bob Baker and David Martin) and The Invasion of Time. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a reign of evil. True, Season Fifteen was made under horrendous financial pressure: inflation was above 20%, economic growth was sluggish and Underworld suffered as a result. But what's present here is a dearth of imagination, not money. In fact, you won't hear any mention of the CSO caves after this paragraph. To be honest, they're not bad. Characters even cast shadows on them! Their main problems are the resulting lack of atmosphere and the occasional doubling up of backdrops, which makes it impossible to work out the geography of the story. But if you're watching Underworld for the effects, you're doing it wrong.

Underworld both sucks and blows for one basic reason that has nothing to do with filthy lucre: it's boring. Like the Quest itself, it goes on and on, without remembering why. The audience endures endless, dreary scenes filled with charmless, wooden characters. The boredom infects everything: the acting is boring, the plot is boring, the design is boring, the direction is boring. Music is nearly absent, and when it isn't it's some of Dudley Simpson's work that makes you agree with JNT's decision to get rid of him come Season Eighteen. There's a good story buried in here somewhere: the Golden Fleece is a timeless story first told over two-thousand years ago and still told today. Underworld is timeless, in that it drags so much that time seems to stand still.

Even in moments where there is plot, it's still boring. The flatness of the whole enterprise sucks whatever draw-factor the story has out of it. The fault isn't just the direction, but its responsibility is huge. Norman Stewart had no training as a director before this story, but got promoted because he found a way to afford the spaceship set. Very commendable, but that makes him more to blame for this sucking nexus of anti-excitement than just his director's credit would suggest. However, there remains the hideous thought that Graham Williams considered this a success, since he hired Stewart to make The Power of Kroll next year, despite the man protesting that he wasn't fit to be a director.

Stewart can't be blamed for the quality of the script, but what he's done is make a poor story poorer. He has no idea about editing multi-camera video into a coherent whole, so the actors are delivering their lines in a vacuum. The set-up is entirely static, interspersed with occasional cuts for no reason; the cut to the Doctor's "physics is about facts" homily in Part Two is amateurish, and the nearby scene in which Herrick leaves a marker and goes on a reconnoitre is so poorly shot it's actually incomprehensible. Set-pieces are drained of drama and in the battle scenes the players mill about aimlessly without any urgency: the examples are endless, but the cliffhanger to Part Three and its resolution are pretty good ones; later in the story, Leela shoots one guard and the other just stands there for the rest of the scene as though invisible. Odd shots are repeated, usually of people running along cave tunnels (the three white-clad guards running along, and one of them half-slipping, is a favourite).

The acting is atrocious. The characters listlessly deliver their lines in a stately monotone. The crew of the R1C is plain beyond imagination, with James Maxwell taking every opportunity to underwhelm and Alan Lake providing the obligatory hot-headed idiot to spice up the wall-to-wall cardboard, but the most prominent offender is Tom Baker. He stalks through this story like a somnambulist, and seems to be in a permanent bad mood. He looks bored and his performance doesn't even qualify as phoning it in. Witness his terribly-acted shock and delivery of "2,000 megatons!!!", or the crap handling of the aforementioned "physics is about facts" dialogue. The Doctor is just a crushing bore in this story, with even the lighter moments flapping around aimlessly, and his less-than-hilarious schtick (the "makes a noise and shushes Leela" thing in particular) goes over like a lead balloon. He doesn't even bother putting emphasis into his dialogue, though that's something shared by everyone in the story. Half the cast constantly deliver their lines in a restrained murmur, while the other half (the villains) shout everything.

There's an exciting story lurking somewhere in the basic outline. This is the story of a hundred-thousand-year quest to the edge of the universe and to the centre of a planet, and yet nothing of any interest is found there. Every millisecond is predictable. There are the human slaves... who live under the evil guards... who answer to a priestly caste... who conduct sacrifices and worship a megalomaniac computer... Zzz... The Trogs and the guards are losers who don't do anything. I didn't actively wish them harm, but it never occurred to me that they presented a genuine threat to even the R1C crew on their own. They might be a nuisance, but that's it. The Doctor even points out the limpness of the "the Oracle is a mad computer" cliche! The main character has passed judgement on the story. Case closed.

And then K9 declares the story's conceit - Jason and the Argonauts in space - to be essentially crap. "What do you think K9?" "Negative." This review writes itself.

The entire story is a nested series of disappointments. The Minyans have spent a thousand centuries searching... for some canisters of DNA; 100,000 years of reproduction in a high-radiation environment has turned the inhabitants of the P7E into drippy losers with characters so thin and unmemorable that Jackson and his troupe become almost charismatic; the guards have a cool costume (I'm a-frightened of masks, so a masked villain is always a plus), but underneath that they're fat security guards who shout things like "Treachery! Heresy!" and, about three minutes into Part Four, one leaves a pause before speaking that is so long that it makes him look like a complete dolt, courtesy of Norman Stewart's shithouse dubbing.

They're also dumb as dogshit: the two running the fumigation don't realise that the gas has been pumped into their own control room, even as their minions cough and fall over. They have advance warning of the Doctor, Leela and Bland Young Native entering the P7E, but they are somehow still surprised and overwhelmed, despite facing only one armed opponent. Then the Seers take off their hoods and things look up for a moment. OK, they look like steampunk Bananas in Pajamas, or man-sized dildos designed by Satan, but I like them. They're crazy, but in a classic Doctor Who sort of way. They look like robots, though they clearly have emotions and speak as though they have been "enhanced" by the Oracle - but they turn out to be dolts as well. Even the Oracle is stupid: handing out planet-cracking "grenades" that even you can't deactivate is a bad move on every level.

(Though, that said, I liked that little hopeless reproach from the Seer just before they all get blown up: "Why not?" "You made it so." That's a man who's realised he's invested blind faith in a god that's frankly rubbish, that is.)

A observation: the Seers' sacrifice (yes, it's another Graham Williams story with a ridiculously complicated sacrifice in it) is called "the Question of the Sword", as - symbolically - the question of how and when we will meet our deaths is hanging over all of us, which weirdly reminded me of the Silence. "Silence will fall when the Question is asked." And the Minyans used to worship the Time Lords as gods...

The Graham Williams house style is "lots of ideas, shame about the execution". Sometimes, the Williams era produces something awesome - City of Death, The Ribos Operation, etc. - but more often you'll lament its inability to get its concepts on screen. The Pirate Planet is botched by "comedy" acting and drippy characters, while The Invasion of Time, written in a hurry, has plenty of ideas with huge potential, just squandered by crap on every level. Underworld is different. I'm not sure there ARE lots of ideas here. The classic Bob Baker and Dave Martin idea-explosion is absent. What we have here: shield guns, pacifiers, the civilisation inside a planet... Yeah, not much.

Then there is the Unique Selling Point: this may come as a shock to you, but SOME REVIEWERS have found a lot of similarities between Underworld and the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. No, seriously. Anthony Read gave Baker and Martin this idea, I believe, and he'd use it himself with the minotaur in The Horns of Nimon. ...But why? Like The Horns of Nimon, Underworld transcribes the myth to outer space in a suitably lame fashion, having ripped out anything of any worth or weight first. The crew of the R1C aren't heroic adventurers and pioneers (the Argonauts, let's remember, were sort of a cross between the Dirty Dozen and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), they're pen-pushing careerists. The Golden Fleece becomes DNA canisters. And replacing the dragons protecting it with crackling lines of electricity is so crass it's almost insulting.

The story copies the myth, step-by-step, with clunking SF literalism, and is so pleased with itself that it insists on constantly pointing out the translation with smug self-satisfaction. There isn't the slightest effort to make this all seem magical or mythic; it seems to be enough that it's a copy of Jason and the Argonauts, rather than something of similar power. This needed to be more operatic. This needed to be more epic. But the show didn't have enough money for that, and anyway the Williams era does not do operatic and it does not do epic. Fantasy is meant to make stories bigger, not smaller.

I've used the word "boring" a lot, but that's because that was my overwhelming response. Underworld simply bores from beginning to end. Even the first episode, which other reviews have judged to be either goodish or at least tolerable, sapped my will to live right from the start. Terms such as "entertainment", "excitement" and "adventure" simply did not exist for me in those 100 crawling minutes. Truly terrible. To raise my spirits, I think I may watch a comparatively towering titan of quality, like The Unicorn and the Wasp or Timelash, perhaps.

095 The Sunmakers

Started 30-Jul

This is the 48th four parter in DW history out of  95 serials, so far.  From this point onwards, four parters are a majority of DW stories at least until they are overtaken by new series 1 parters...

It's also the middle story of Tom Baker's run.

This has plenty of symbolism embedded (the characters and costumes of the Gatherer and the Collector) and quite a good deal of hard physical violence: whips, guns, knives, public steamings, electrocution... and throwing a man from the roof of a high building to his death.

This was in the same year as the ultra violent Target was showing (producer some guy called Philip Hinchcliffe, created by Graham Williams, starring Dr Mehendri Solon (Philip Madoc) and Tomas (Brendan Price) off The Face of Evil, plenty more directors, writers and stars from DW... this show really is the other, other Blakes 7!). The Sweeney was still on ITV... Later in the year comes The Professionals.

I guess punch up violence was in vogue on Brit TV in 1977 so that might explain the violence in The Sunmakers'.

The symbolism is inchoate.

While there is plenty that satirises commerce and accounting as mistaken goals in society (unpaid overtime, breathing tax, the police are called the 'inner retinue') there is also plenty symbolism that satirises popular revolutionary policitcal history e.g. the major target for the rebels in p4 is the 'viscast' studio, the TV station. This marks the story as middle Europe, middle twentieth century communist/anti communist revolutionary in nature. What's possibly missing is the backlash or the reactionary moves that would come from the ousted classes who had any power or privilege that they found was removed by the achievement of the rebels. Luckily there's no dodgy 'Natasha' accents....

The symbolism is undermined by the rushed production in the last episode. Several things clearly went wrong in studio for p4 (cite the seen where the characters start looking for K9 after the prop malfunctions at 4m48s to about 5m03s). This fall-apart seemed to happen in the Image and Invisible too. Is there some studio time pressure causing this? The contrast in quality of direction between p4 and earlier eps in this is extraordinary.

The themes are actually in common with the broad story arc in Blakes 7 which is also about the struggle to overcome a totalitarian future state though the motivations of the oppressors are more powerful and less industrial than in Sunmakers. The means of totalitarian oppression are common. (fascistic 'police' and airborne chemicals  (PCM vs Shadow or Pylene 50 in B7.)

Also very B7 is the props, costumes and sparsely decorated 'corridor' sets. The guards' guns are clearly cardboard boxes with loo roll tubes for barrels. There's plenty of pillars with 'circuit trace' print wall paper. Locations chosen are drab, modern and concrete from unspectacular office block interiors, basements and behind the stairwell places.

Costumes are simple smocks and tunics (possibly this is simply explained by the budget.)
Only the Gatherer and the Collector are any different which serves to mark them as 'other'. The Collector has a dark business suit (of course). The Gatherer is dressed like a giant licorice allsort complete with a ridiculous "bishop's" hat and a cape. He is meant to be an overweening, hidebound buffoon (as well as a tax collector...)

The cast is notably Blakes 7. Not only is Michael Keating (Vila) and Adrienne Burgess (Hanna from Shadow) present but plenty of bit part faces. Eg. Tom Kelly (Nova in Space Fall) appears as the Guard who is confronted by Goudry in p4. Tom Kelly was also in Face of Evil so the link is probably director Pennant Roberts who also did lots of B7 eps. Tom Kelly is famous for being the soldier in Sapphire And Steel-The Railway Station. According to Toby Hadoke his DW career is exemplary: guard (4Q), guard (4W), Vardan (4Z).

Compared to this the rest of the cast are merely superstars...

• Richard Leech (Gatherer Hade) was in famous movies like The Dam Busters (1955), A Night to Remember (1958) and more besides.
• Former child star William Symons (Mandrel) who sadly passed away in June this year, is famous for his long run in Heartbeat. 
• Henry Woolf is famous for his collaboration with noted playwright Harold Pinter apart form numerous film and TV roles. Most significantly he spent most of the 1990's as Professor of Drama at Saskatchewan University.

The script in this is cracking Robert Holmes at his best again. It is noticeable right from the first scene how the dialogue 'info-dumps' seem to paint story background pictures rather than just tell bits of the story they can't be bothered to film. Compare and contrast Sunmakers p1 11m23s (very good) with Invisible Enemy p4 8m24s (a shocking example of what not to do.) It's an amazing skill that really ought to be analysed and copied slavishly (by everyone).

Behind the scenes, Rob is easing his way out of the script editor's chair. Anthony Read has been shadowing him for most of Series 15. Bob is in his 5th year in that job and more as a DW alumnus. He started shadowing Terrance in 1973.

He never really climbs out of the DW blackhole. At the time of his unfortunate death in 1986 he was still being dragged back to it. In a wider world sense his talent might have been seen as wasted but the better episodes of DW (and other series like B7, Bergerac) benefitted from his efforts.


Sunmakers also serves as something of a template for late 80's DW in that it concerns itself with 'bringing down the government' (to almost quote Andrew Cartmel, think Happiness Patrol). It shows that DW can be more than 'monster of the week' which the modern show sometimes boils down to.

But it also reveals that new limitations on DW production at the time in 1977 were holding it back from peaks that had been reached in the last few years.

Sunmakers is great DW. It can be read as a political allegory (not entirely new in DW e.g. Green Death) or just a rollicking DW story. Certainly it's scale and intent are at a new level since the political/social/industrial aspect is front and centre and not distracted by Daleks or anything.

That's a helluva mixed bag, ultimately.


ABM Rating 3.16/4.00
LJM Rating 4.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 9.28/10   

No. 24 (out of 95)

Link to Cumulative Rankings

Rankings Scoreboard